The most recent and many Digital Movie Formats
The latest (not all would agree it's the "greatest") iteration of mass-distributed Mpeg is Mpeg-4, the most impressive version of which is H.264, which Apple Computer uses as the movie format in its iPod Video players. H.264 is also incorporated into QuickTime 7, which runs on Macs and Pcs both, and has been optimized to supply high ability across a broad range of bandwidths - from 3G for mobile devices to high-def (Hd) for broadcast and Dvd authoring. H.264 and Mpeg-4, of course, are members of a much bigger house of Mpeg standards.
One more amelioration track comes into play here: high-def (Hd) for television as well as the new Blu-ray and the few remaining Hd-Dvd disc makers, not to mention its role in "tomorrow's television," Iptv (Internet Protocol Tv). Citizen are already confusing Hd, a display technology, with source quality, arguing that "Hd is better than Mpeg" - which is a non sequitur. A recent amelioration explains the true relationship.
Flying a tad under the radar, in late October 2006, Universal Home Studios Entertainment released its film "The Interpreter" to Hd-Dvd encoded with Avc Mpeg-4 (Advanced Video Coding Mpeg-4, an additional one way to say H.264). The studio had previously used the Vc-1 codec exclusively. According to "High-Def Digest," the "lone other Avc Mpeg-4 Hd-Dvd currently on the market, Paramount's 'U2 Rattle and Hum,' has been met largely with negative response from early adopters." The publication also reviewed "The Interpreter," and reported that the video ability was "rather iffy."
It was a composition of ability issues and manufacturing costs that convinced the electronics and computer industries to go with Blu-ray and practically wholly abandon the Hd-Dvd format. The same battle took place in the 1980s in the middle of Betamax and Vhs, but it is not all the time quality, per se, that wins out, but the best equilibrium of quality, manufacturing cost and usability. In this latest battle, Blu-ray won a decisive battle. The same battles are fought among competing digital movie formats.
H.264 was ratified as Part 10 of the Mpeg-4 acceptable but, as mentioned previously, there are many other flavors of Mpeg. Scores of fellowships are working on more and more industrialized compression schemes based on the Mpeg standards, and the suspect they are doing so - to come full circle - is because of the volume of new and existing article in the marketplace.
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